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Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
M. Mirandou, S. Aricó, R. Sanabria, S. Balart, D. Podestá, J. Fabro
Nuclear Technology | Volume 199 | Number 1 | July 2017 | Pages 96-102
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1323534
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Because of their good behavior under irradiation, fuel elements based on U3Si2 particles dispersed in an Al matrix have been used to convert to low-enriched uranium in a large number of research reactors. This behavior is extended to any compound grown by interdiffusion between silicide and Al during the fabrication process.
In this work, two plates fabricated with U3Si2 particles dispersed in an Al matrix were analyzed by optical and scanning electron microscopies, wave length dispersive microanalysis, and X-ray diffraction after the fabrication process. The results show that U(Al,Si)3 together with another phase with the same crystalline structure as U3Si2 but modified cell volume was formed.
A detailed analysis of fuel elements based on U3Si2 is considered very useful to be applied when going into greater depth in the frame of a U(Mo) qualification program.
